Smart Technology Dumb People
Smart Technology Dumb People In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury we learn about what his prediction of the future will be.
It basically tells about a man named Guy Montag who lives in the future of our society. What we learn about our society is that it contains mindless humans who rely on technology for everything and that our society has become all about censorship such as burning books because they contain meaning and they are powerful but also a society where we don’t think for ourselves but the technology we have tells us what to think or what to do. Now these are shown through the book because Bradbury was concerned about our society that we will amount to this. Honestly I believe Bradbury was right to be concerned about us relying on technology and letting technology do the thinking for us but on the other hand I don’t think Bradbury had to be concerned about censorship in society. Now one issue we can connect today from Fahrenheit 451 is the fact of how much people depend on technology today. One issue which connects to today is the fact of how people let the technology tell them what they should think one example in Fahrenheit 451 was “Thank God for that.
You can shut them, say, ‘Hold on a moment.’ You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours.
” (138). Now to summarize that long quote is that people can argue with a book they can have their own opinion when they are reading a book they can disagree or agree it’s up to them, but similar to today’s tvs we let them control us unless you pause every 30 seconds you don’t have a chance to have your own opinion when it comes to what the tv is shooting at you. Its so fast and gives you all its information in that manner that whatever that tv wants you to feel you feel what ever that tv wants you to believe you will believe because there was no “closing” a tv you can’t sit there and think about it because it controls people it’s in charge. Another problem is how people rely on technology and that’s really not to hard to spot in our society today. You may wonder how do you work through this issue at hand.
Now by working through that on your own you are building a skill called problem solving. For a long time people would figure a way out and the very last thing they did was call for help or have something done for them. What has become true in our society that is true in Fahrenheit 451 is when you encounter a problem it’s let me search how to get through this. You don’t think you don’t explore there is absolutely no work on your part except typing the problem at hand. As a result people today don’t build the problem solving skill and thus the become more and more reliant on technology. The reason Bradbury has the absolute right to be concerned is because one day we might find a problem technology can’t solve then what.
Then we just ignore the problem and we figure if technology cannot solve it nothing can and as a result that problem grows and one day it’s going to end up being a disaster. In Fahrenheit 451 there is nothing that can restore relationships or restore happiness and no one really knows how to be happy or have a relationship because they just distract themselves with technology and rely on technology to entertain them or make them happy and that’s the very reason bradbury was concerned. So all in all a cycle develops the more people decide to rely on technology the more times they have too and our society is becoming that way people are not quite as smart they don’t have those people skills or life skills daily problem solving has become a huge challenge for many people and it’s very scary because we could very well end up with a society similar to Farenheit 451. On the other hand or the other side of the scale Bradbury being concerned about censorship was actually pretty wrong or invalid. We saw how in Fahrenheit 451 censorship was like the main goal; it being that lets get rid of all opinions and only give people one choice and they did this by actually burning books because books hold messages and power and opinion something that was absolutely against this idea of censorship. Now today I think we see the complete opposite.
Quite honestly our nation is all about the right to freedom and to have an opinion. One example being even at the top at our nation’s capital the very thing that controls a big part of our society there is quite distinct example being political parties. We see how democrats and republicans have almost opposite views on everything and if we as a society were to try and censor that it would be an udder fail. People today have become too opinionated for censorship to be an issue. Our country and the society we live in is against censorship we absolutely are against it. In Fahrenheit 451 we saw them burning books where compared today a big part of our culture is books.
We see books become absolutely powerful and affect us as people they become trends and they all have different ideas. Now to be concerned it would be absolutely understandable if for example we burned houses down because they might make a group displeased, but we thrive on arguing and making groups mad. “Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere.
The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!… Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.
” To summarize the concern is that we have to eliminate opinions because they make some groups unhappy and we have to censor ideas because we need to accompany to everyone’s needs, but we dont always go and get rid of something because it makes one person mad we don’t believe in making everyone happy because to do that we would have to do the concern bradbury brings up and that’s censor ideas but we don’t and all in all there is no hint of it ever being an issue from at least my point of view. So when it comes down to it I really don’t think that bradbury being concerned about the issue of censorship was really valid at all. All in all bradbury was right to be concerned about some issues and some issues he wasn’t as valid. Now yes as a society we have not come close to some of the issues bradbury has warned us about but we also have become some of the issues he was extremely concerned about. Now the main issue is technology and bradbury is spot on and it’s extremely scary when you begin to think about it. As a whole we need to take this and stop from relying on technology because we are becoming dumber and more dependable and quiet honestly ignorant to the issue because if we don’t figure out or stop this path we are on more issues we thought would never be a problem may very well become a reality and sooner or later our society might not be that much different from the one we saw in Fahrenheit 451 and I challenge you to at least once a day instead of use your technology to maybe search up a definition or to and try and figure out a problem to instead use your head and work through it on your own.
